Friends,
Over the past several months, we’ve traveled the state on our Listening Tour, meeting with musicians, venues, presenters, and educators in their own communities. We’ll release the full findings in early November. While the tour was underway, we also ran a Statewide Music Community Needs Survey for anyone who couldn’t make a session or had more to say. Between late January and mid-October, 146 of you filled it out. Thank you, and thanks to Missi Hasting, who designed the survey and compiled the results.
First, a word on who answered. Half of you are in the Portland metro, two-thirds are independent musicians, and most of you have been at this for more than 20 years. Every region of the state is represented, but Central, Eastern, and the Coast sent only a handful of responses each, so we’re treating those numbers as a starting point.
The core problem is income. Sixty percent of you named financial sustainability as one of your top three challenges, ahead of everything else on the list. Many of you said pay hasn’t moved in years. One Southern Oregon musician said players there have been earning about $100 for a two-hour gig since at least 2017, and someone on the North Coast said the pay scale hasn’t changed since 1981.
There’s strong interest in grants. Sixty-eight percent of you said you would apply for a MusicOregon grant; another 21% said maybe, and grants ranked first among the programs you’d use. We should be honest about one thing, though. We listed grants as an option in the survey, so the question pointed you toward that answer. Grants can help, but they won’t fix low pay on their own. We would like to expand the Echo Fund beyond Portland, and whether we can will depend on state and foundation funding.
That’s one reason the advocacy results matter. Sixty-four percent of you rated advocacy for Oregon’s music sector Very Important or Critical, and 58 people rated it Critical, more than any other item in the survey. The result was the same in Portland and everywhere else.
You also want practical tools. A statewide directory and shared resources scored well, and so did training, with marketing and grant writing at the top of the list. The music community is not big on meetings (who knew?), but folks statewide value networking and connection.
The responses split evenly between Portland and the rest of the state (73 each). Outside the metro, the needs are more basic. Respondents there were almost twice as likely to struggle to find gigs (48% outside Portland metro compared to 25% in the Portland Metro) and much more likely to struggle to find funding (47% compared to 27% in Portland). People in Salem and Southern Oregon described venues closing, or bars that never brought music back after COVID. About 15 of you wrote that statewide resources stay in Portland. One person from North Central Oregon put it plainly: “Portland seems to absorb nearly all the funding in the state.” Hearing that from so many of you confirms why MusicOregon is working to become a truly statewide organization.
One more comment stuck with me: “I fill out these surveys all the time. Nothing changes.” That’s a fair challenge. The board will use these results, along with the Listening Tour findings, to inform our strategic planning, and we’ll report back once that work is complete at the end of March. Several of you also offered to help, from organizing events in Salem to promoting music through local media. Thank you: we’ll be in touch!
Most of you (83%) said you’d like to hear from us via the monthly newsletter, so you’ll find updates in your inbox.
We got you.
Tim Wilson
Board President
MusicOregon
Song of the Month: I Know You Know, Esperanza Spalding, Live at The Chan Centre (Vancouver, BC)
